Pages

Ponder This:

Real public servants are free enterprising individuals who, inspired, embrace challenge, take risks, and create, sometimes big, and often, they create jobs in the process, all out of their ideas, and self initiative...

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

In the aftermath of the media scrutiny surrounding the verdict in the Kelly Thomas case, the media and bloggers have missed an opportunity to ask the question of not just how this happened, but what kind of police department should we have? Manuel Ramos’ attorney John Barnett clearly won the legal argument, as the jury believed him when he stated both during closing statements and to the press, “These peace officers were doing their jobs … they did what they were trained to do.” Barnett’s use of the word “peace officer” was deliberate and was repeated by both the print and broadcast media. It was meant to portray the police actions that evening as not both necessary, but “just”

"If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern."—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids," by Radley Balko. What does this map mean?How to use this mapView Original Map and Database

Key

Death of an innocent.

Death or injury of a police officer.

Death of a nonviolent offender.

Raid on an innocent suspect.

Other examples of paramilitary police excess.

Unnecessary raids on doctors and sick people.

The proliferation of SWAT teams, police militarization, and the Drug War have given rise to a dramatic increase in the number of "no-knock" or "quick-knock" raids on suspected drug offenders. Because these raids are often conducted based on tips from notoriously unreliable confidential informants, police sometimes conduct SWAT-style raids on the wrong home, or on the homes of nonviolent, misdemeanor drug users. Such highly-volatile, overly confrontational tactics are bad enough when no one is hurt -- it's difficult to imagine the terror an innocent suspect or family faces when a SWAT team mistakenly breaks down their door in the middle of the night.But even more disturbing are the number of times such "wrong door" raids unnecessarily lead to the injury or death of suspects, bystanders, and police officers. Defenders of SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics say such incidents are isolated and rare. The map above aims to refute that notion.